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GP2 comes to Europe with Barcelona race

By LJ Hutchins

Friday, April 25th, 2008

The first race of the European GP2 season is due to take place at the Circuit de Catalunya tomorrow – and you’ll be able to watch it live on UK television.

British drivers to keep an eye on include Ben Hanley, a member of Renault F1’s young driver programme who’ll be appearing for Campos racing; and Mike Conway hoping for great things with his new team, Trident Racing.

Conway is driving beside the relative newcomer Ho-Pin Tung, who is coming to the team after appearing in the GP2 Asia series, and who is said to be keen to gain more experience in the racing environment.

Trident, commenting on Conway’s signing in its pre-race press release, said: “Mike, selected as a test-driver by Honda F1 for the speed skills shown in the preseason and for the professional and human approach with the rest of the team, will try to hit the top from the beginning.”

Team owner Maurizio Salvadori added: “Our goal is always try to improve last year’s performances and to try to enter the top three in both the drivers’ standings with Mike and in the teams’ classification.

“My personal goal is to try repeat the outstanding win scored in 2007 at Monte Carlo, and sweep our home event at Monza, that will host the 2008 grand finale.”

So there you have it, Mike. You know what to do.

In practice today Conway brought his car home eighth with a time of 1:28.936, which was 0.806 seconds adrift of Adrian Zuber, leading the timesheets for his Piquet team. His team-mate Ho-Pin Tung was 16th.

For Campos, Hanley came a respectable 12th with a time of 1:29.516, which was 1.386 seconds behind the leader. Team-mate Vitaly Petrov was seventh.

After Barcelona the series will be moving on to Istanbul and Monte Carlo before arriving at Silverstone for the British leg of the championship on the weekend of July 5.

The races will be televised on ITV4 with the feature race taking place from 2.30pm on Saturday and the sprint race from 9.25am (ouch) on Sunday.